TERFnet

Photos have been over the Internet for months: Thieves are targeting train cars, stripping them of their cargo, opening the boxes, and taking the good stuff. The tracks are littered thick with sundered boxes. The president of the Union Pacific recently complained to the city, noting that the train bulls were arresting the same people and the prosecutors were letting them go with a slap on the wrist. Well, not a slap. More like a pat: There, there, you had a bad day, but it’s going to be okay now.

In the old days, hardened rail-yard cops carrying rugged cudgels with interesting stains would have made short work of the vandals. In the old days, people thought the system worked like Dragnet. The TV show is regarded today as both stodgy and slightly campy, if it’s regarded at all, but in its original run on radio it was a hard-boiled, “realistic” look at a cop’s job. Nearly every episode began the same way.

Sergeant Friday, speaking in a voiceover: It was Monday. It was hot in Los Angeles. We were working the night shift out of day watch. The boss was Captain Kepin. I was on my way to robbery division.

(Sound effect of door opening.)

Room 301.

Officer Smith: Hey, Joe.

Friday: Hi, Frank. How are you?

Smith: Not so good. It’s Faye. She’s hacked off at me again.

Friday: Why’s that?

Smith: It’s her brother. He’s been staying with us for nine months. I tell you, Joe, he can’t do anything wrong in her eyes. I came home the other night, you know, found him all dressed up in her things.

Friday: Her things?

Smith: You know. Her things. Women things. What you’d call foundation garments.

Friday: Well, I wouldn’t know about that. I’m notoriously averse to female things in a way the show seems hesitant to address.

Smith: Trust me, Joe, you don’t want to see my brother-in-law in a Maidenform bra. I dreamed of a lot of things but that wasn’t one of them.

(Phone rings.)

Friday: Hot shot, I’ll get it. Friday, here. Yeah. Where? Pico? Got it. (Hangs up phone.) Well, your brother-in-law might like this one.

Smith: Why’s that?

Friday: The Train Gang? They just stole a thousand pair of pantyhose.

(Baleful woodwinds play.)

In the next 23 minutes, Friday and Smith would track down the members of the Train Gang. They would be apprehended at a rooming house and would bitterly denounce each other, making sneering remarks to the cops. Then the announcer: In a moment, the results of that trial. We would be informed that the suspects had been found guilty, presumably during the cigarette-commercial break, and that California law required a sentence of not less than two but no more than 398 years for the crime. DUM DA DUM DUM.

Occasionally Friday would ventilate a crook and make a laconic remark tinged with annoyance, as if thinking of the paperwork ahead. This was generally accepted as the way the world worked. If you repeatedly broke into trains, stole things, and got caught, the prosecutors would . . . what’s the word? Prosecute. Now it’s as if the chief prosecutors are determined to keep people out of jail, if possible. Dragnet would be different now.

Friday, speaking in a voiceover: It was Tuesday. It was cool in L.A., due to capitalism’s inability to treat the planet as something other than a disposable commodity. We were working the day watch out of Spontaneous Property Redistribution. The boss was Captain Pelagius.

(Sound effect of door opening.)

Friday: Hey, Frank.

Smith: Hey, Joe. You get that sheet from the boss about the train robberies? He’s pretty hacked off about it.

Friday: Which one? The subway holdups? The Amtrak pistol-whipping? The gang that’s targeting the Disneyland monorail?

Smith: No, those were sent down to the Misdemeanor-Engagement Unit. It’s about the gang that’s repurposing train cargo for community usage.

Friday: Captain said the offenders have hit the train 20 times in two months, and that’s an indication that social conditions have not improved enough to suggest they stop.

Smith: Yeah, but the train they hit yesterday was carrying a shipment of hormones and puberty blockers for transgender teens. Kinda puts a new spin on it.

Friday: Hate crime?

Smith: Hard to say. But one of the suspects liked a tweet from J. K. Rowling.

Friday: And?

Smith: Word on the street says she’s a TERF.

(Baleful woodwinds play.)

Friday, speaking in a voiceover: In the modern lingo of the underworld, a TERF is a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Their methods of operation are known to all police officers; they use social media to spread a message of biological essentialism. The public is often unaware that their neighbor, their friend, the salesperson at the store may be a TERF. It’s our job to make sure the public does not prioritize mere property crimes over the necessary work of reconstructing gender paradigms.

And so on. By the way, Friday never said “Just the facts, ma’am.” But he also didn’t say “Just the subjective interpretation of events seen through the postcolonial intersectional prism,” either. Which might be why the character endures.